Melissa Ginsburg

In Sunset City, Melissa Ginsburg’s grimly absorbing debut novel, inseparable high school friends Charlotte Ford and Danielle Reeves meet for the first time in many years. Not long after this, Charlotte learns from police that Danielle has been brutally murdered. A detailed backstory emerges: Charlotte grew up poor, her father absent and her mother, chronically ill, dying when Charlotte was in her teens. Danielle grew up a child of privilege, hating her mother and continually testing the boundaries of acceptable behaviour. The rupture in their friendship occurred when Danielle started hanging out with criminals, became hooked on heroin and ended up in jail. The reunion comes about because Sally, Danielle’s estranged mother, contacts Charlotte looking for her daughter’s phone number. Sally’s news for her daughter is that a wealthy relative has died and Danielle is on the receiving end of a substantial inheritance. Though Charlotte has lots of questions, she’s willing to leave it to the police to solve her friend’s murder. But in subsequent chapters, Charlotte is slowly drawn into the shady world that Danielle inhabited, one where young women make a marginal living as porn actors and there’s always someone waiting in the shadows with a bottomless supply of drugs. Feeling bereft and a little guilty, Charlotte finds a sympathetic ear in Audrey, Danielle’s best friend from this world, and the two become intimate. But Charlotte is wary, having learned from a hardscrabble and solitary life that letting herself get too close to another person invariably leads to disappointment. Ginsburg’s high octane narrative moves at breakneck speed. The chapters are short and punchy, focusing squarely on Charlotte, her observations and opinions of herself and the people she’s spending her time with. Ginsburg writes crisp sentences with just enough carefully chosen detail to sketch a scene. But her prose shimmers and again and again she brings the grimy Houston setting vividly to life. Readers of noir fiction will find the high sleaze factor to their liking, but Ginsburg’s literary aspirations are evident in the depth and nuance of her characterizations. Sunset City serves up a heaping plateful of tragedy and wasted lives, but Charlotte Ford—lonely, deeply flawed, given to poor decisions and reckless behaviour—remains an attractive protagonist whose fate matters.… (más)

One of the things I loved most about this book is I was never quite sure about the endgame until literally the last few pages. It’s a great fiction story with some mystery and suspense elements.

Ava is fourteen years old and her mother passed away recently. She is sent to stay with her grandmother, Lane, in New Orleans. A tough situation for Ava especially since she hasn't had any type of interaction with Lane other than a one time visit when she was a few years old. It's fair to say Lane is not your typical grandmother. She is a successful artist who spends her days getting lost in her work and getting high with her assistant, Oliver. Ava's arrival will stir up some painful memories for Lane. And you know what they say, the past has a way of rearing its ugly head.

The story gets off to a great start with a flashback to 1997 when Lane was raising her daughter, Louise, and a kid shows up unexpectedly at her house. You are left wondering the relevance of that moment and how is it going to tie in to the current day story with Ava and Lane.

The feel of the story is unique and in my opinion doesn't fit in a nice and neat box of any genre other than regular fiction. It's not a typical coming of age story but technically it might meet the definition. You have the mystery of what happened years ago as well as suspense elements with the current day storyline. It's interesting because I was never sure what the intentions were by the author in regards to the story but that turned out to be a positive thing. I was able to just sit back and enjoy this story as it unfolded without the usual theories floating around in my head on how it was going to end.

Worth reading as Ava and Lane are fascinating characters.

I received a free ARC of The House Uptown by Melissa Ginsburg from Macmillan in exchange for an honest review.… (más)

The backside of Sunset City is covered by author-blurbs calling it everything from “entrancing,” to “smart and sexy,” to “dizzying and addictive.” One blurb calls its supposed heroine “one of the most memorable of recent years.” Another says that “Melissa Ginsburg brings a poet’s eye and ear to this story...” but that one is from the same guy who has to reference “Houston, Texas” rather than just naming the city as if anyone with even a quarter of a brain can’t place Houston in its proper state, so I knew to take his blurb with a particular grain of salt. So, five blurbs, all glowing, of course, with praise – and I have to wonder if any of them read this little 188-page novel for themselves.

Sunset City tells the story of Charlotte Ford and Danielle Reeves who were best friends before graduating high school but have lived very separate lives for a while by the time that Danielle’s mother contacts Charlotte hoping to learn her daughter’s phone number. Charlotte, because she feels so guilty for accepting $1,000 from the woman in exchange for her friend’s phone number, gets in touch with Danielle to offer her half the money and to apologize for giving in so easily. The two young women reconnect emotionally and it appears that their friendship will take off from exactly where it was before Danielle succumbed to the life of drugs, nude dancing, and booze she lives now. That, though, would never happen because just days after the two talk, a rather bumbling Houston detective shows up at Charlotte’s apartment to tell her that her friend has been murdered – and that her bloody, mutilated body was found in one of the city’s seediest motels.

So now, if you are a fan of crime fiction, especially police procedurals and the like, you expect the real fun to begin as Houston’s police department works to identify Danielle’s killer before he can get to Charlotte. Well, not this time. Instead, author Ginsburg spends the next eighty percent of the novel’s pages following Charlotte and Danielle’s friends from one drug den to the next as Charlotte drowns her grief by staying continuously stoned or drunk and sleeping with various lowlifes (of both sexes) in her old friend’s circle of friends.

And then for no apparent reason, Charlotte suddenly wises up, identifies the killer all on her own, beats the tar out of said killer, calls the cops, and is personally transformed from lowlife to “heroine.” I found it impossible to suspend my sense of disbelief to the degree that would have made Sunset City fun or intriguing to read – much less, to make it memorable for any positive reason. I recommend giving this one a pass.… (más)